


The Iron Band

by tinydooms



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:27:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10949298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinydooms/pseuds/tinydooms
Summary: Adam feels his lungs close up, an iron fist clenching them together. It makes him cold and sick and frightened to have to suck in air in great gulps, really working to get each breath around the band crushing his chest.





	1. Part One

**Part One**

     As a child, when he is feeling worried or fretful, Adam feels his lungs close up, an iron fist clenching them together. It makes him cold and sick and frightened to have to suck in air in great gulps, really _working_ to get each breath around the band crushing his chest.

     His mother is good. She takes his hand and holds it, holds him, rubs his back and murmurs assurances to him. _You're all right, it's all right, don't be afraid, I have you_. Most of the time this is enough to make the panic abate. His mother wants to know what is wrong, but he hardly has the words to tell her, and besides, what can she do? _You won't leave me, will you? You won't leave me alone with him?_ He knows that Maman is powerless against Father. He knows this makes her sad. She wants them to love each other. Adam promises, and the iron band tightens around his lungs.

     Adam doesn't know how to tell her that he is afraid.

*

     He stands at her bedside, watching her struggle to breathe, and feels the familiar pain in his chest. His mother's face is white, but for the soft purple-blue of her lips and eyelids. She is fading fast. The doctors give the young prince encouraging words, but Adam is old enough, wary enough, to know when an adult is lying. _Please don't go! What would I do without you?_ He cannot leave her side. _Please, Maman. Please don't leave me. I love you, Maman. Not until my whole life is done will I leave you_. His father comes into the room and, not sparing a glance for his dying wife, takes Adam by the shoulders and pulls him away. The Prince de Courcy's fingers are strong, his grip full of anger. Adam knows not to struggle, but he cannot take his eyes off of his mother. He knows that this will be the last time he ever sees her.

     In the antechamber to his mother's bedroom, Adam's lungs close. He cannot breathe. He sinks to the floor, gasping, and despite his father's annoyance, he cannot stand. The horror fills him, and he cannot breathe.

*

     He cannot breathe at the funeral. He does not hear the words and music of the solemn mass. Adam stares at his mother's casket and fights the iron band crushing his lungs. _My mother is dead. My mother is dead. What will become of me?_

     He weeps when they carry her into the de Courcy crypt and seal her into her tomb. His father, seeing, strikes him across the face. Adam lowers his head and forces his tears to stop. He knows that everything will be different now. He concentrates on breathing around the horror.

*

     Ten years pass. Adam grows from a boy into a man, and the iron band grows with him. He learns to breathe around it. At formal events with his father, he breathes around it. During private moments when it is just the two of them, he breathes around it. _Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid._ But Adam is afraid. He is afraid of his father, of his mercurial temper, of his darting fists and thrashing stick. He is never not afraid.

     The servants abandon him to his father's abuse and he cannot breathe. His father beats him and disparages him, and he cannot breathe. He learns to stand aloof from the staff, to show no emotion around his father. He learns what will make the Prince angry, and what will make him proud. He cheats at chess against a visiting count. His father smiles, and Adam breathes hard against the iron band. He yells at the housekeeper for abandoning him. He throws shoes at his valet, screams insults at the maids. His father rewards him. Adam feels the band ease, but it does not disappear. It never disappears.

*

     On the night of his seventeenth birthday, Adam returns from the festivities to find a woman in his bed. She is young, about his age, and pretty, and naked but for a feather in her hair. Looking at her, Adam feels the iron band, loosened by wine and dancing, crush down hard around his lungs. So this is the last present his father had hinted at, sardonic amusement in his cold eyes. He cannot imagine staying, but to go is unthinkable. _Are you all right, your highness? I can't breathe. Let me help you. Come. Lay back and let me help._ Probably he is not her first virgin. She takes his jacket off, his waistcoat. She pulls his shirt out of his breeches and rubs his belly. Adam's eyes close; his lungs loosen. She strokes his hair, his face, his chest. She unbuttons his breeches and rubs his loins. And suddenly, Adam can breathe.

*

     After that, there is no going back. Pleasure helps. He loves sex, loves the way it releases his fear and fills his lungs with air. He loves pleasuring women, and develops his skills. When he is making love, all fear falls away and he can breathe, and breathe, and breathe. Dancing helps, too. He becomes known as one of the best dancers in France. In the breathless whirl of the dance, Adam can breathe. As time goes on, he realizes that hedonism is the only thing keeping his lungs open. When he is enjoying himself, he does not think of his fears. He does not think of father watching him, ready to punish him for any sign of weakness. He does not think of the people whose taxes pay for his relief. Adam closes his mind and his heart, and flits from pleasure to pleasure. He breathes.

*

     When his father dies and Adam assumes the title of Prince de Courcy, he throws a week's worth of lavish balls. He is twenty-two and free. He wakes up from a nightmare after the third ball with a scream in his throat and a blinding hangover throbbing behind his eyes. His lungs are stone. He lies in his sumptuous bed and struggles to breathe. This is wrong. He must not be enjoying himself enough. But as he lies there, Adam has to admit that it is the nightmare that has shaken him. For he had dreamed that he was his father.

     But he is nothing like that. True, he had had to raise taxes to pay for his parties, but all noblemen did that. One has land and the peasants must pay for the right to live on it. Adam closes his eyes and thinks of the next ball. When that doesn't work, he sends a note along to the not-quite-a-lady invited for the occasion, inviting her to join him. The resulting dance cracks the bedframe, but Adam can breathe again.

*

     He is twenty-five and seeking a wife. Not for love, or companionship, or even for distraction, but because one needs an heir to leave one's possessions and title to. Any beautiful and well-connected young lady will do. He can marry, beget his heir, and continue his pleasurable whirl. His wife can take any lover she likes, so long as she provides an heir first. Thinking about it, Adam feels the familiar iron band around his lungs- _what am I doing?_ -and so he does not think about it. There will be a ball in the castle, and all of the eligible young ladies in France are invited. He will pick the most beautiful of all the girls to be his special one.

*

     He dances with all of them. They are all in white, with black and white wigs. He wears midnight blue and fanciful make-up, and flits from young lady to young lady. They all look the same to him, whirling past. For a moment he cannot breathe. Then the balcony doors fly open.

*

     He kneels before the Enchantress, horror filling him the way it has not for years as she stares down into his eyes. He cannot breathe. _Cold, cruel, unloving, heartless. Beastly._ She calls him many names, tells him that he must repent. If he could speak, he would. But the iron band crushes his lungs and he cannot. And then there is pain, ripping through Adam like darts from hell. He feels his bones stretch and crack and twist, his clothes ripping, his wig falling to the floor as he is transformed. He cannot breathe, and yet he screams. _Please, Maman, help me_. The Enchantress watches, impassive. She shows him the rose that he had so mocked, and tells him that he has until the last petal falls to love someone and be loved by them, or else he will be a beast forever. And Adam, lying twisted and broken and _wrong_ on the ballroom floor, finds that the iron band has transformed with him, and he cannot breathe.

*

     He flees. The West Wing is remote, but not remote enough that he cannot hear the screams and shouts that fill the rest of the castle. The Enchantress's words ring in his ears: that the curse will only be broken when he learns to love another, and earn their love in return. Impossible. _Impossible_. She has turned him into a monster. _No_ , Adam hears her say, _I made you into what you really are_. He sees the rose she offered him floating under a bell jar on the marble table in the middle of his glassed-in balcony. He wants to scream and scream, but he cannot. He sinks to the floor, folding in his new monstrous form like a cat, and gasps for breath.

*

     She has cursed the servants, too, and when he learns this Adam is even more horrified. What did _they_ do? Nothing. He had thought they were simply afraid of him in his new form and had not sought him out that night (he can't say that he blames them, though he is hurt and furious), but even as a monster he has needs, and it isn't until he stumbles into his bathroom and finds that his toilet is now alive that he realizes the extent of the curse. The close stool takes one look at him and begins to yell in outrage, and Adam gives in to hysterics. He sits on the bathroom floor and howls until a candelabrum storms in and waves its candles in his face. He recognizes Lumiere's voice and manages to stop wailing.

     Eventually they find a toilet that has not become sentient.

*

     Adam tears through the castle, consumed by an anger so great that it has burst the iron band around his lungs as once only pleasure could. He smashes countless objects and ornaments, slashes his way through every picture of himself he can find, then starts in on those of his father. It feels good to destroy things. He had never done it before the curse.

     It is better to be angry. If he stops to think, his chest grows tight and the panic rises up to consume him. The curse will never be broken, he knows that. He is a monster. He saw himself in the dressing room mirror before he smashed it. Horns, claws, a _tail_.

     He lets the anger and hatred consume him.

 

 

 


	2. Part Two

**Part Two**

 

     Years pass. Adam obsesses over the rose, watches as each petal falls, knowing that the curse will never break. It is a torture he subjects himself to willingly, in penance for his sins. The staff will become inanimate when the last petal falls. Their blood will be on his hands. He watches the petals fall, watches his sumptuous castle fall into ruin, and he cannot breathe from the pain and panic and helplessness.

     It does not help to know that he has only himself to blame.

*

     Occasionally a traveler loses their way and finds the castle. Adam hides himself when they come and lets his staff feed the unexpected guest dinner and put them up in the little drawing room for the night. He finds himself hoping that they will return, but they never do.

 

*

     The one thing of beauty on the estate that survives the Enchantress's curse is his mother's rose garden. All other flowers succumb to the everlasting winter, until all that is left are the trees and the overgrown hedges that maze one side of the castle. Adam weeps the day he finds the rose-covered colonnade. He sits on one of the benches and talks aloud to the roses, pretending that his mother can hear him. At first he can hardly bring himself to speak. When he does, he apologizes. He does not know where to begin apologizing. Everything went wrong after she died.

     After the sorrow comes the anger. _How could you leave me alone with him?_ He shouts at her, tells her he hates her, rages at her. Then he apologizes again. He doesn't hate her. He misses her. For the first time in twenty years, he allows himself to grieve. He weeps for his lost mother, for the horror that his life became. And slowly, he realizes that he can breathe.

     He forbids the staff to touch the roses.

*

     When the stranger comes, lost in the woods and pursued by the wolves that surround the castle, Adam is in the rose garden, perched on the top of the colonnade, tying a wind-broken rose bush upright. He notes the man riding up to the castle, and marks him when he comes flying out again. That's a first. Perhaps Mrs. Potts had let her boy serve him; if anyone would reveal a household of enchanted furniture, it would be young Chip. Adam expects the man to ride off into the night. What he does not expect is that he will stop on the way.

 _I promised Belle a rose_. Who is Belle? The question dies in his mind as Adam watches the man pick a rose, gasping as a thorn pricks him. For a moment he can't breathe in outrage. _These are my_ _ **mother's**_ _roses!_ He leaps from the top of the colonnade, startling the man into falling, scaring his horse into running away. The man cries out in terror, but Adam pays no attention. Outrage has clouded his senses. He picks the old man up and drags him inside, past his protesting servants, up to the tower dungeon. The man is babbling apologies. Adam slams the door behind him and stalks away.

     He hates himself for knowing that his father would approve.

*

     By morning he has resolved on letting the man go. One night in the dungeon of an enchanted castle will probably cure him of his thieving ways. What he doesn't expect is the man's daughter, who comes bursting into his castle wielding a stick in one hand and Lumiere in the other. Adam is so shocked to see her that he stands staring until her father tells her to flee _before_ _ **HE**_ _comes_. He growls at that; he cannot help it. Pride is too ingrained in him to let the slight pass. Nor can he help but snarl back at the girl when she confronts him about her father's treatment. He keeps to the shadows as much as he can, but she forces him to show his face. The shock with which she recoils is too much for his wounded dignity, and suddenly Adam can't bring himself to admit that he was going to let the man go; instead he forces her to choose whether or not to take his place. _Idiot,_ w _hat are you doing?_ something inside him screams, but he is too proud to back down now. For a moment he thinks that the girl will leave. Fathers are expendable, to Adam's mind, and this one is old. He is horrified when she shoves the old man out of his cell and slams the door behind her. _You took his place._ The girl looks at him as though he is an idiot. _He's my father._

     He tries not to be jealous as the father in question, being dragged away, swears to come back for her.

*

     Adam panics. It is not an unusual sensation, the way the iron band crushes his lungs, but it has been so long since it appeared over something he could control that Adam is quite beside himself. There is a _girl_ in his castle. A loud, feisty, angry girl who shoved a candelabrum in his face and refused to take no for an answer. A girl who held a stick in one hand. Would she actually have hit him with it? Adam wonders. He crouches like an animal on the floor of the West Wing, forcing himself to breathe around the iron band. Why couldn't he just let them both go? Why does he have to be such an insufferable idiot? Why does he lash out at the slightest thing? He berates himself to keep from the thought that this is the first woman he has seen since the Enchantress cursed them, and he has already so offended her that she will never love him, ever.

*

     He does not count on his servants getting involved. Charm the prisoner, indeed. He pitches a fit when he sees the table set for two, snarls at Lumiere for the presumption, hating himself and all of them for the situation they have found themselves in. He tries to get out of it. _She's the daughter of a common thief. What kind of a person do you think that makes her?_ Mrs. Potts just stares at him. _You can't judge someone for who their father is, now, can you?_ He hates her for that. He hates her for being right, and for not doing more to protect the child he had been from his father. But something in her voice makes him go to the girl, Belle, and clumsily try to convince her to join him for dinner. She repulses him. _I would starve before I ever ate with you_. The shame of it makes him shriek at her and storm away. The panic resurfaces and grips him; he retreats to the snowy balcony to breathe in the frigid night air. He resolves to try again tomorrow.

     And then he turns to go inside, and she is bending over the rose, with her hand raised to touch it, and everything around Adam goes white in his terror. He screams; she flees. He thinks he might faint, doubles over hyperventilating.

     Mrs. Potts comes in, shouting that the girl has left, ridden off into the night. _Good_ , he thinks. _Let her go back to her father. She was never going to love me_. Mrs. Potts starts shouting again. There are _wolves_ ; the girl could _die_. _And it will be all your fault_. The voice that says that is not Mrs. Potts's. It is far deeper, far crueler and more mocking. And so he follows Belle into the night, to flee from his father's voice.

*

     Too much happens for Adam to really begin to process it until later, when he is lying in his bed-his human bed-for the first time since the curse began, letting his freshly-washed and aching wounds air out. Belle is talking to the servants, asking why they are so kind to him when he's cursed them. Adam winces; this girl certainly pulls no punches. He listens to Mrs. Potts explaining how they have looked after him all his life. He tries not to snort and bring down Belle's wrath again. He had loved the staff once, loved being with them, and they had abandoned him to his father's abuse. Even the terrible guilt he feels for cursing them will not allow him to forget that. And then he freezes, listening to Mrs. Potts's reply, how they did nothing to save him from his father. _They know. They know what they did_. It occurs to him for the first time that maybe, maybe, the Enchantress cursed them not for Adam's sins, but for their own.

 


	3. Part Three

**Part Three**

     He awakens in the morning to Belle reciting Helena's speech from _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. For a moment he lies wondering at the splendid irony of it- _Love sees not with the eyes but with the mind_ -and then he finishes the quote, hoping beyond hope that she cares for Shakespeare as much as he does. And she does. For a moment Adam's gruff, unloved heart sings. And then she admits to him that _Romeo and Juliet_ is her favorite play. _Romeo and Juliet_?! Adam forgets to be polite and charming in his indignation. She prefers that sentimental drivel over _A Midsummer Night's Dream_? Over _Much Ado About Nothing_? Over _Twelfth Night_?

     Adam marches her down to the library. Belle informs him as they go that she loves reading, but has had an extremely limited range of books available to her. This only makes him limp on faster. He flings the library doors open and tells her to start reading.

     He does not expect her reaction. Until this moment, he realizes, he had been expecting scorn, not the awestruck disbelief that fills her face. He finds himself looking at her with new eyes. He offers her the library as her own almost without meaning to, and finds himself wondering at the gift, and at the quip- _Some of them are in Greek_ -that falls from his lips when she asks if he's read them all.

     He had not expected that books would be the way to this young woman's regard.

*

     Belle likes Shakespeare. She likes Moliere. She likes Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn and Miguel Cervantes. She reads books like a thirsty man drinks water. Seeing her joy, Adam's anger evaporates like rain in summer sunshine. How can you be angry around someone who loves the same books you do? Adam has never had anyone to discuss his love of reading with. He had carefully hidden it from his father, complaining about his tutors and the subjects they were teaching him, never letting on to the prince that he couldn't get enough of learning, of reading. Around Belle there needn't be any such subterfuge. But Adam is shy all the same. He cannot forget that he is a monster. He cannot forget that she is here under duress. He cannot allow himself to hope that she will ever love him.

     But it amazes Adam to realize how good it feels to have a friend.

*

     Vulnerability is not a sensation that Adam has ever enjoyed. He has always preferred to hide behind a mask of pleasure, to not think about how he is, and always has been, far more vulnerable than he wants to be. It has always been better not to think, not to examine his actions too closely lest the iron band tighten around his lungs. It has always been easier, safer, to be cold and aloof.

     Belle makes him unsure. He tried being his old self with her and she tore him to shreds. He knows that the staff wants them to fall in love, and he knows how futile that hope is. Adam has no expectation of the curse being broken. He has long resigned himself to being unlovable. The only person who ever really loved him died, and his heart has been hidden away behind fortress walls ever since. It was safer that way.

     And then she came, Belle, a young woman with absolutely no tolerance for his selfish behavior. He still doesn't know why she chose to help him back to the castle rather than riding off home. He doesn't know how to thank her for it.

*

     Sometimes they read at table. Sometimes they chat. She tells him of the book she read that morning. Maybe he can help her carry some of her books back to her room? She has a whole stack selected. Perhaps he can take a look and direct her which to read first.

     Adam, shyly, agrees.

     He surveys the stack of books she has selected in some amusement. Surely she cannot get through the thirty or so there so quickly that she needs them in her room? But Adam understands the comfort of being surrounded by books. He sorts through them, separating history from natural philosophy, mathematics tomes from novels. _You ought to start from the beginning with philosophy. Try Plato. Is it in Greek? Not this edition_. _See how you like Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Do you like them? I do_.

     There is so much that Belle hasn't read. There is so much she wants to read. Adam, watching her, listening to her, feels the walls around his heart begin to break.

*

     He still escapes to the rose garden when he wants to talk to his mother, or read, or think. The staff let him be when he is there, and he finds this a relief from their somewhat smug celebration of the fact that he and Belle are cautiously finding their way toward friendship. (He must never let himself dare to think she could love him.) He tells his mother about Belle, about how he isn't sure that she is his prisoner anymore, or how to tell her that. He tells her about the books they are reading, about how for the first time in years the castle is beginning to feel less like a prison and more like a home. He leans on the colonnade and talks and feels the band around his lungs ease its grip.

*

     Belle follows him there one day. He isn't talking to his mother, luckily, but reading. She notes the cover as she approaches; Adam starts and hides the book under his paws, sheepish that she has caught him out, but not angry. He can't be angry with Belle, and that still surprises him. They are candid with each other for the first time, thanking each other for lives saved. Adam isn't sure how to respond to Belle and hides behind banter. She gives him a sideways smile and he wonders again just how much of his fear she guesses at.

     They listen to the servants laughing inside. _They know how to have a good time_. Belle smiles, listening to the laughter. And Adam finds the words tumbling out of his mouth before he has time to think. _Sometimes, when I take my dinner, I listen to their laughter and pretend I am eating with them_.

     Belle looks astonished by this admission. Embarrassed, Adam looks down at the book in his hands. _You should join them; I'm sure they would love it. I've tried, but when I enter a room, laughter dies_. He cannot bear the look on Belle's face then, the realization of his loneliness. She tells him about her village, about the way they mock her and call her a _funny girl_. There is bitterness in her voice that he well understands. He feels a moment's swift outrage that anyone would mock Belle, followed by an even stronger desire to protect her from their contempt. _What a pair we make_ , he thinks. Aloud: _what do you say we run away?_

*

     He has never actually used the Enchantress's Atlas, preferring the safety of the Mirror to the uncertainty of astral travel. Besides, where could he travel that the people would not scream in horror at the sight of him? But Belle can go wherever she likes.

     He does not expect her to take him with her.

     The attic they find themselves in is tiny and full of dust. A blade swings passed the window and he realizes that they are in a windmill. Paris, then. Montmartre, where the windmills are. Belle's childhood home. Together they realize what happened to her mother, and Adam feels the iron band around his lungs come back at the thought of the woman dying alone, abandoned by her family at her own behest. A week ago he would not have been able to feel anything but contempt for Belle's father for his actions, but then, a week ago he had not known Belle. _I am sorry I ever called your father a thief_. She turns to him, her face sorrowful. _Let's go home_. He takes her arm, gentler than he has ever touched a woman, and takes her home.

 _Home_.

*

 

 

Author's Note: Comments are my favorite thing, just fyi. :-)


	4. Part Four

**Part Four**

 

     Belle is silent when they return to the library. Adam puts the Atlas away; when he returns Belle has gone. He frets all evening. Plumette informs him that Mademoiselle is in her bedroom and has requested solitude. When he uses the Mirror to look at her, she is sitting at her window, staring into the middle distance. She emerges for dinner, but is pale and withdrawn. Recognizing grief when he sees it, Adam does not press her. He feels oddly guilty, as though he is the cause of her pain. In truth, he is unsure of how to react, how to help her. The last person he mourned died twenty years ago. So he does not say much to her, hoping that she will speak to him again when she is ready. (He does not realize just how much Belle appreciates this.)

     After she has retired for the night, Adam goes out to the rose garden and cuts an armful of the white flowers. He gives them to Lumiere and tells him to arrange them for Belle, and retreats before any of them can laugh at him for his softness.

*

     Belle is better in the morning, and Adam is relieved. She seems to have made peace with her mother's death. Adam sees her in the ballroom, surrounded by an army of flying feather dusters (he has never gotten used to them). Maestro Cadenza is playing for her as she gathers up the chandeliers' discarded drop-cloths, looking in the icy sunlight like a princess in her petticoats and train. Adam, trying to make light, jokes that she is making everything look so beautiful, they ought to have a dance to celebrate. _Yes, all right. Tonight?_ Adam briefly contemplates fleeing the castle. _Yes, tonight. Eight o'clock? Yes, all right._ She smiles.

     He flees to the West Wing and the balcony, where he sits gasping for breath. He has not been in such a panic since Belle arrived. _What was I thinking?!_ Chapeau finds him, ascertains what has happened. He vanishes and shortly returns with enough hot water to bathe the entire village, and the main castle staff. Adam sits in his bathtub, hidden behind a curtain, and manages to find enough breath in his lungs to tell Lumiere what he has done. He wishes they would go away and leave him alone, but they do not. _It's perfect! The rose has only four petals left, which means that tonight you can tell her how you feel! I feel like a fool. She will never love me. Do not be discouraged-she is the one!_

     ( _Oh please, oh please_...)

     They had failed him once, but they are here for him now. Adam lets them prepare for the dance, trying to breathe. His lungs are stone. He has never been more afraid.

     But the band breaks when he comes downstairs and sees Belle standing in her yellow dress at the foot of the East Wing staircase. (Has she done that on purpose, to remind him of her favorite play? _It is the East, and Belle is the sun._ ) She smiles that cheeky smile of hers at him, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation they have found themselves in. She offers to lead the dance, and Adam is grateful, for he has never danced in his monstrous form. The dance takes them, and Adam loses himself in it. He had forgotten how much he loves this, is startled and pleased by how much better dancing is now, with Belle, than it has ever been before. Everything is better with Belle.

     Afterwards they go out onto the snowy balcony, ostensibly to cool down. Adam looks back inside, at Lumiere and Cogsworth and Cadenza, all of them waiting for him to confess his love to Belle. He looks back at Belle, and can barely breathe. _It's foolish, I suppose, to hope that a creature like me might one day earn your affection_. Belle cocks her head at him. _I don't know_. The words are a blow to his solar plexis. _Really?! You think you could be happy here?_ He watches her consider her answer. _Can anyone be happy if they aren't free?_

     There is nothing to say to that, and so Adam says nothing. He does not know what to do. He hasn't thought of Belle as his prisoner since she brought him home the night of the wolves. In that moment he realizes that she has only stayed because she gave him her word. He curses himself for a fool. Of course that is why she stayed; Belle is a woman of integrity. He listens as she speaks of her father, that he was the one who taught her to dance. _You must miss him_. Adam does not miss his father, but his father never loved him. He cannot bear the sorrow in Belle's voice when she replies. _Very much_.

     And then he remembers the Mirror.

*

 _I'd like to see my father_.

     Adam does not try to look into the Mirror with her. Some things are private, and he knows that he does not have any right to curiosity about her life. He hears her gasp and turns. The villagers surround Maurice, pushing and shoving at him as he fights to free himself. Belle is horrified. _What are they doing to him? He's in trouble!_

 _Then you must go to him_. The words leave Adam's mouth almost before he realizes what he is saying. Belle looks astonished. He repeats himself-obviously she must go. She loves her father. To stand idly by while he suffers would destroy her. _No time to waste_.

     He gives her the Mirror so that she can remember him. _Idiot_ , something inside him shouts, _she is your prisoner. She will never want to look back at you_. Belle is staring at him with an expression that Adam cannot identify. She takes the Mirror, thanks him, turns to leave. Looks back at him, still with that furrowed brow, that puzzled face. Adam stands straight, with what he hopes is an encouraging look on his face, until she runs from the room. And then the iron band winches itself around his lungs and he leans over the rose, gasping. His clothes are suddenly too tight; he pulls off jacket and waistcoat and cravat and stands alone in his shirt and breeches, and still he cannot breathe, cannot breathe...

*

     She is gone and won't come back. Adam knows this in the depth of his soul. He tries to explain to his horrified servants that he had to do it. _But_ _ **why**_ _?_ Mrs. Potts understands. _Because he loves her_. But she does not love him and now it is too late, as Cogsworth so succinctly puts it. Adam can barely look at them from shame. He has sacrificed his servants' lives to make Belle happy. He has damned them all, forever.

     They leave him alone. Adam wraps himself in a velvet banyan and begins to climb the towers, watching as Belle, still in her yellow gown, rides away through the snowy gardens. Yes, he loves her. He loves her so much he hates himself. And he couldn't, couldn't keep her here. She was not free; she said so herself. She was not happy.

     He cannot bear it, this feeling like his heart is being ripped in two. He wants to sink down and cry like a child; instead, he climbs to the tallest tower and watches her until she fades from view. She will always be with him, he knows that. He will sit in the library and talk to Belle, as he sits in the rose garden and talks to his mother. He will pretend she is there, pretend that she is just in another part of the castle. And he will pretend this right until the moment that the last petal falls, and the servants die. And then he will kill himself.

     But for now, he will wait, and watch. Plumette's words, _maybe she will come back_ , haunt him. She won't. Why would she? He crouches on the top of the tower, looking out passed the gates towards Villeneuve. It does not help that he knows that he is being melodramatic. Slowly, carefully, he breathes around the iron band.

 

 

Author's Note: Thank you for all the kudos and wonderful comments! I hope you'll let me know what you thought of this chapter. And hang on to your hats-the next chapter's gonna be a doozy.


	5. Part Five

Part Five

 

     When he sees the first light among the trees, Adam's heart gives a great leap. _Is it her?_ Elation quickly gives way to confusion, when he realizes that it is not Belle and her father marching towards the castle, but a howling mob.

     A _mob_? The leader, a man in a red coat, holds the Mirror in his hand. Adam stares, horror coursing through him. Either this man has hurt Belle and taken the Mirror from her, or else...but no, surely Belle didn't hate him so much that she had set the village on him. She was only going to rescue her father. Surely she had had _some_ feelings of friendship for him. They had read together, laughed together, danced together. He had shown her the Atlas! He remembers the strange look on her face when he gave her the Mirror, how he couldn't name it. It couldn't have been hatred. He knows what hatred looks like. He cannot bring himself to believe that she would have so betrayed him. _Please, please_...

     They are breaking down the doors. _Kill the Beast! Kill the Beast!_ Adam crouches on the icy stone parapet, seeking not to draw attention to himself, and listens to the war chant. _Kill the Beast!_ Cogsworth begs him to come help them fight off the mob and all he can think of is Belle. _She's not coming back_. His majordomo's reply is short and cold. _No_. It is obvious that Cogsworth believes that Belle is the reason for the mob at their doors.

     He cannot speak in more than a whisper. _It doesn't matter now. Let them come_.

     Cogsworth leaves him. Adam watches as the mob enters the castle, listens as the staff mount their counter-attack. He cannot bring himself to feel anything other than despair. And the iron band around his lungs loosens, and vanishes. For the first time in years, Adam breathes freely. He crouches in the dark, sucking in great lungfuls of air. It seems that at the end of all things, when all hope has faded, his own fear has left him. Of course it has. He knows what to expect now. The good people of Villeneuve will murder their forgotten friends and loved ones, they will murder their unloved Prince, and they will return to their good, ordinary lives confident that they have destroyed the threat to their safety. Adam breathes in again. Death does not seem so terrible. _Maybe I will see my mother again_.

     He hopes that Belle, whatever happens to her, will be happy.

     (He does not know that she is already riding to his aid.)

*

     Someone climbs up the tower stairs and comes to stand behind him. Adam looks over his shoulder at the man in the red coat. He is holding a pistol. _Hello, Beast. I'm Gaston. Belle sent me_.

 _No_. Adam turns away, devastated. The man continues, mocking, relentless. _Were you in love with her? Did you honestly think she'd want you?_ What can he say to that? Adam says nothing, listens to the metallic sound of the gun clocking into place. He looks out over the castle grounds again, one last time. He tells himself not to be afraid.

     The gunshot crashes into the silence; the bullet bites deep into Adam's back, just below the left shoulder. He cries out, falls forward, over the ledge. For a moment he knows what it is to fly. And then he hits the lower turret with a crash, shattering roof tiles, fumbling for something to hold onto. The pain is terrible, but worse is the knowledge that the shot was not meant to kill. The red-coated man, Gaston, is hunting him. The cold horror of it scares Adam to half out of his wits. He leaps from turret to turret, trying to get away. _I'm coming for you, Beast!_ Adam jumps again, shattering more roof tiles. He _will not_ be hunted like an animal. He makes for the farthest turret. If he is going to die, it will be this way. The drop is steep, leading down to the balcony that surrounds the upper forecourt. He is heavy; he will shatter on the pavement. He dives forward, attains the turret, starts to climb upward. Slips.

_NO!_

_Belle?_

     He swings around and there she is, standing in the doorway of a fallen balcony. He screams her name into the night, forgetting the hunter, forgetting everything. _You came back!_ She screams back. _I tried to stop them!_

     She came back, she _came back_! Suddenly death is no longer an option. Adam wants to live and live and live. He begins to leap backwards, back the way he came, and manages to pull himself onto one of the walkways, despite the pain in his shoulder. If he can make it to her, everything will be right. But the hunter has other ideas. A shower of stone rains down on Adam, knocking him sideways, and suddenly the Gaston is there, kicking him. He tears loose a stone ornament, once part of a now-missing guardrail, and begins to beat Adam with it. He hits the wound in Adam's shoulder, knocking him into the wall. Adam has been beaten before, but never like this. Never had his assailant meant to kill.

     Adam is a broad, muscular Beast, but Gaston's blows hurt him beyond anything he has felt before. He can feel his ribs cracking under the stone spire, the air exploding from his lungs as Gaston kicks him along the worn stone footpath towards the cupola where his mother had liked to take tea on fine days. Adam falls on his face, listening to the hunter's advance. He can hear Belle screaming at Gaston to stop. Adam knows that Gaston won't stop, not until Adam is dead. Rage blossoms in him, and not the anger of a spoiled young libertine, but something far deadlier, cold and corrosive. His father's voice whispers in his ear. _I told you they would kill you one day, didn't I?_ Adam pulls himself up, listening to Gaston stalk closer. He spins as Gaston swings at him and catches the weapon in his good right hand. For a moment they struggle, then Adam flings the stone spire away and seizes Gaston by the throat. _Kill him! Kill him now!_ His father's shout fills his ears. Adam forces the hunter backward until he is holding him over the ledge above a long drop. His father screams. _Let him go! Kill him!_ But the hunter begs for his life. _Please-don't hurt me, Beast_.

 _Beast_. Through the rage and the pain, the word strikes Adam in the heart like a piece of ice. _Beast_. _Monster_. How his father would like that, how he would love to see his son put this man in his place. Adam holds Gaston's life in his hands. _Come_ , his father inside him urges, _do it now. Kill him!_

 _No. No, I will not._ Adam draws Gaston towards him, looks that hateful man dead in the eye. _I am_ _ **not**_ _a beast_.

     He turns back into the cupola and flings the hunter away, tells him to get out. The man flees, a coward at the last. Let him go. Adam turns towards Belle, standing on the balcony of his own tower room. She warns him not to jump but he does anyway, landing clumsily and scrambling to stand upright. His heart sings as he stands and looks at her. She has seen everything, he realizes, and her eyes are shining. For a moment they just look at each other, and Adam is filled with such profound joy that he cannot speak. Then an explosion rends the night.

     The first bullet takes him in the center of the back, sends him crashing to the ground. Belle shrieks, tries to pull him upright, but Adam cannot get his legs to work. The bullet has punched through him; he seems to stand outside of himself as he realizes that there is a fist-sized hole in his chest. Belle urges him to stand, trying to get him inside. _Come on!_ She looks back at the hunter and screams. _Please!_ The second shot rings out. Belle screams. Adam flies forward, tumbling into the winter garden, rolling to the base of the rose's plinth. He lies still, unable to breathe, his own blood pooling hot around him. The pain is incredible. If he could breathe he would scream, but he cannot. Belle bends over him; he clutches at her hands, wanting to hold on to her for as long as he can. He doesn't want to go, not now. _You came back. Of_ _ **course**_ _I came back! I'll never leave you again_. He tries to smile at her, to ease the fear he sees in her eyes. The pain is going now; he knows this means he is dying. Belle tries to reassure him, her tears falling onto his face. Adam squeezes her hand; it seems to take an immense effort. He doesn't hurt anymore. There is so much he wants to say to her, but darkness crowds the edges of his vision and he knows that it is over. _At least I got to see you one last time_.

     He sinks away from her then, into liquid darkness. There is no pain here, no fear. Is this death? The darkness turns gold. He feels as though he is floating, safe and warm. A woman's voice (the Enchantress's?) appears in his head. _You passed the test_. Well, that's all very well and good, but he has also died. But the gold light begins to recede, and with it the warmth and comfort of death. Winter-cold chills him and for a moment he wonders if he has landed in hell. The light is fading, he is coming back to himself. He recognizes his surroundings; he is back in the West Wing and _sweet mercy_ he hurts all over. This is not death. The last of the gold light fades and Adam feels himself set down onto his own two feet, set down onto icy cold tiles. He stumbles and puts his arms out to steady himself, and catches sight of his hands. He stares. They are smaller, thinner, _human_. He looks down; his bare, human feet stand on the snow-covered tiles; his bare legs are covered gooseflesh; his hair is draggled all around his ears; and he can breathe again, really breathe, and oh lord this is real, this is real, _this is real_...

     Adam turns around and stares at Belle. She stands just behind him, flummoxed, but not at all afraid. Her face is tear-stained and her eyes swollen and s _he loves him,_ _ **she loves him**_. She must; he is standing before her, human, alive. He doesn't know what to do, what to say. He opens his mouth, closes it. _She_ _ **loves me**_. Adam can hardly believe it; he wants to jump and scream and laugh and cry. He does none of these things. Belle comes towards him, her eyes wide. She puts her hands on his face, sliding them over his cheeks to cup his head, and they are warm and soft and gentle. No one has ever touched him so tenderly. Belle tilts his head down towards her and looks into his eyes. He understands without being told that she is looking for _him_ , to see _him_ in this new body. She begins to smile then, and laugh, and she rakes her fingers through his blond hair. Adam lets himself touch her, smoothing her hair back over her ears.

     And Belle pulls him into her arms and kisses him. Not for her a chaste peck on the lips, either; her kiss is fierce and tender and passionate and clumsy all at once. Adam kisses her back with everything he has. Belle wraps her arms around him and holds him tight. She breaks the kiss and looks up at him and there are tears pooling in her eyes and running down her face, and that makes Adam weep, too. They sink to the floor together, weeping and clutching each other, and Belle pulls him into her lap and just holds him tight. _You died, you died, you were gone, it was all my fault, oh God, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry! Don't be, don't, my dear one, it's all right. It's all right, you did nothing wrong, Belle, I love you. I love **you** , I do, I don't even know your name-!_

     It's true, he has never told her, and for some reason this makes laughter bubble up in Adam's chest, and he kisses Belle again and strokes her face. _I'm Adam. Adam de Courcy._ _At your service_. She smiles, whispers his name, presses kisses to his eyelids. _My Adam. My dear one_.

     Soon they will go downstairs and find the staff returned to their human form. They will find the villagers returning to reunite with their loved ones. Soon Maurice will arrive in the company of Père Robert, and Adam will beg his forgiveness for what he has put the man through. Forgiveness will be freely given. Soon Mrs. Potts will embrace Adam so tightly that he feels all the bruises he has from the fight, and Lumiere and Cogsworth and Chapeau will haul him away to be treated with arnica and wrapped in bandages. Soon enough they will discover three fully-healed bullet holes along Adam's back. Soon they will begin to plan a celebration ball. But for now it is enough to sit on the floor of the now-sunny and snow-free West Wing, holding Belle. It is enough to tell her that he loves her, again and again, and to hear her say it back to him. It is enough. _He_ is enough.

     The iron band has broken. Adam can feel it. It may haunt him, but the fear and hatred has gone. He looks at Belle, and he breathes and breathes and breathes.

 

 

 

Author's Note: Phew! This chapter was hard to write. I hope you've all enjoyed it! Please let me know below. Now I've got to think of something else to write. :-) Thanks for reading!

 


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